Panel Speakers

Dennis has been working in the security arena for over 40 years, having served in her Majesty's armed forces as a military Police officer, as director of security for The Tate group of art museums, a short period as Director of security for Christies, the auction house, and is currently the Head of security for the RCA, the renowned post graduate university for Art & Design in UK. He is regularly asked to speak and provide advice on art security and cultural property protection and serves on the advisory board for the Smithsonian cultural property protection committee.

Éric Bourdonneau is a historian and archaeologist specializing in ancient Cambodia. Since 2007, he has been an assistant professor at the French School of the Far East (Efeo/PSL) and a member of the “South-East Asia Center” laboratory (Cnrs/Inalco/Ehess). He also teaches the history and epigraphy of ancient Cambodia at the School of Advanced Studies in Social Sciences. Head of the EFEO center in Siem Reap from 2016 to 2019, he leads several research programs both on Angkor and on the ancient capital of Koh Ker in collaboration with the Cambodian authorities.

Eric Catalfamo is a career member of the United States Foreign Service, and has served as the Director of the Cultural Heritage Center in the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs since August 2021. In this role, he oversees U.S. Government international cultural heritage policy and programs that protect and preserve heritage in cooperation with partners around the world. Under his leadership, the United States has expanded its network of bilateral cultural property agreements and taken emergency measures to protect cultural heritage from unrest in Afghanistan and the war in Ukraine. In prior diplomatic assignments, he served as the head of public affairs for U.S. embassies in Chile and Costa Rica, and as cultural attache in Venezuela and Bosnia-Herzegovina, with experience in cultural heritage preservation and protection in these and other posts. Catalfamo holds a B.A. in Art History from Yale University.

Curtis S. Chin has served as a trustee of World Education Services of New York and is a former U.S. ambassador to the Asian Development Bank. As a member of the ADB board, he pushed for strengthened governance, risk management and development efforts focused on people, planet, and partnership, particularly on infrastructure projects in Asia's least-developed nations. Through his advisory firm RiverPeak Group LLC, Chin now advises a range of startup firms and impact investors in Asia, including Equator Pure Nature, a leading ASEAN-based, natural consumer products company and cleantech pioneer, and the Dolma Impact Fund, the first international equity fund focused on Nepal. Chin previously was a senior executive with Burson-Marsteller in the US, Switzerland, and Asia, where he oversaw Beijing and Hong Kong operations. He has provided counsel to a wide range of governments and businesses on stakeholder engagement, public affairs, corporate responsibility, crisis management and market entry.

Tess Davis, a lawyer and archaeologist by training, is Executive Director of the Antiquities Coalition, a Washington D.C. -based non-profit dedicated to fighting cultural racketeering, the illicit trade in art and artifacts. Over the last decade, Davis has conducted extensive field research on the illicit trade in Cambodian antiquities. Davis has been a legal consultant for the Cambodian and US governments and works with both the art world and law enforcement to keep looted antiquities off the market. She writes and speaks widely on these issues — having been published in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, CNN, the Huffington Post, and various scholarly publications — and featured in documentaries. In 2015, the Royal Government of Cambodia knighted Davis for her work to recover the country’s plundered treasures, awarding her the rank of Commander in the Royal Order of the Sahametrei.

Jason is an award-winning author and investigative reporter who has spent a decade researching the illicit antiquities trade. He has also written on topics such as arms trafficking, forensic DNA, disaster fraud, money laundering, and public education. In 2006, Felch and Frammolino were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize in Investigative Reporting for exposing the role of the J. Paul Getty Museum and other American museums in the black market for looted antiquities. Their book on the topic, Chasing Aphrodite, was a Los Angeles Times best-seller and has been awarded the California Book Award, the SAFE Beacon Award and the ARCA Award for Art Crime Scholarship.

David Gosset, founder of the China-Europe-America Global Initiative, is a global affairs and international relations expert. He has received an honorary distinction by the King of Spain, the President of Italy, and the highest honor of his own country France, the Légion d'Honneur. He is the author of Limited Views on the Chinese Renaissance and the editor of the triptych China and the World.

Since 2019, H.E. Hab Touch has served as Secretary of State of the Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts. In early 1980, after the Khmer Rouge, he studied at the School of Fine Arts in Phnom Penh in the field of sculpture. In 19861, he received a scholarship to study at the Nicholas Copernicus University in Torun, Poland, and obtained a master’s degree of Conservation and Restoration of Works of Art in 1993. Afterward, he worked at the Nicholas Copernicus University as an Assistant Professor.After returning to Cambodia in 1995, his work commenced at the Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts. In 1996, he was appointed Deputy Director of the National Museum of Cambodia, responsible for conservation, documentation and exhibition programs and Director of the National Museum of Cambodia in 2007. In 2011, he was promoted to Director General of Heritage responsible for museums, antiquities, archaeology and monuments and in 2014, Director General for Intangible Cultural Heritage, overseeing a range of art disciplines including the Performing Arts, Cultural Development, Cinema, Fine Arts and Crafts, and Library.

After receiving his Bachelor of Arts at The Royal University of Fine Arts, Phnom Penh, archaeologist and conservator HUOT Samnang has been a metal conservator at the National Museum of Cambodia for nearly two decades. Now a member of the Kingdom of Cambodia's Ministry of Culture, Samnang is prominent in discussions about the future of Cambodia's heritage.

Dr. Jarvis completed her degree in Political Science and Indonesia Language and Literature at the Australian National University, earning her Ph.D. from the University of Sydney. She has worked on issues relating to crimes against humanity and genocide with a focus on Cambodia, including with Yale University’s Cambodia Genocide Program. Dr. Jarvis was instrumental in the advocacy to establish the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (also known as the Khmer Rouge Tribunal) and served as its Chief Public Affairs Officer and later head of the Victim’s Support Section before retiring in 2010. Dr. Jarvis is a Vice-President of the Permanent People’s Tribunal and on the Advisory Board of the Center for the Study of Genocide and Justice in Dhaka, Bangladesh. She served as a member of the International Advisory Committee of UNESCO’s Memory of the World program (2013-2018) and helped to spearhead the designation of the archives of the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum as a Memory of the World memorial site.

Educated at the Royal University of Fine Arts in Cambodia where he received his Bachelor Degree in archaeology (1995), and his Master Degree in the field of cultural anthropology at the Ecoles des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris-France (1998)/ Vireak concretized his long involvement in the radiance of Khmer Culture as archaeological field researcher and as the Director of the Royal University of Fine Arts for the educational part, and then as the director of the National Museum of Cambodia. Under his impulsion, the National Museum developed a significant international exhibition policy, spreading the Khmer culture and art abroad, and strengthening the international network of the museum. Vireak is recognised archaeological expert and recipient of the Asia Foundation’s prestigious Brayton Wilbur Jr. Memorial Fellowship (2013).

John-Paul Labbat is employed in New York City and assigned to a squad which is unique within Homeland Security as it is the only full-time group dedicated to combatting antiquities trafficking. He has been working in this field since 2013 and am the agent responsible for the cases against both Douglas Latchford and Subhash Kapoor, both of whom have pillaged Southeast Asia of their precious cultural heritage.

Mr. LONG Kosal is currently serving as a Deputy Director General and is assigned to assist the Director General of APSARA National Authority in overseeing the administrative operation of three technical departments: Department of Communication, Department of Angkor Cultural and Tourism Development, and Department of Public Order and Cooperation. Having joined APSARA National Authority in June 2001, he was first appointed as Assistant to the President Director General of APSARA National Authority and successively promoted to the current position in 2021. Throughout the long career with the APSARA National Authority, he has been pretty much involved with the following tasks: Spokesperson (Public Relations), Cultural and Tourism Development, and Public Order.

Simon Mackenzie is a university academic working on white-collar crime and transnational organised crime. His work on antiquities trafficking has been published in books including 'Going, Going, Gone' (2005), 'Trafficking Culture' (2019), and 'Transnational Criminology' (2020). In 2014 he wrote, with Tess Davis, an 'anatomy of a statue trafficking network' which was published in the British Journal of Criminology and which documented the routes and personnel involved in the historical removal of antiquities from Cambodia. He is currently working on a project funded by the European Research Council called 'Trafficking Transformations' which compares trafficking and crime in various types of object, including antiquities, wildlife and fossils.

Currently serving as Secretary an general and Justice of the Italian Corte di Cassazione (High Court), with special dedication to criminal matters, human rights and the protection of cultural heritage. From 2014 to 2022, he served as legal advisor at the Permanent Mission of Italy at the UN (NY). In this capacity he negotiated GA resolutions on crime prevention, criminal justice and protection cultural heritage, as well as UNSC resolution 2347/2017. In previous years (1981-2014) he served as judge of first instance court, public prosecutor, head of office at the Ministry of Justice, Justice at the High Court and elected member of the Superior Council of the Judiciary. Author of numerous publications on legal reviews and volumes.

Obtained a Ph.D. in Heritage Studies from the University of Tsukuba in Japan and an MA degree in Archaeology and Art History from Columbia University in New York, USA, he has 18-year working experience since 2004 in the Culture sector of UNESCO at both headquarters (World Heritage Centre) and field offices (Indonesia, Afghanistan, and Cambodia). He has been engaged in projects in all fields of the UNESCO Culture sector, which include the safeguarding of both tangible and intangible cultural heritage, cultural diversity and creative industry promotion, cultural policies for sustainable development, museums development, and promotion of international legal instruments related to all UNESCO Culture Conventions. He has published scientific peer-reviewed papers with Routledge, Springer, Emerald, ICOMOS, etc.

In 2000 PHENG Sam Oeun has started his archaeological career with the Authority for the Protection and Management the Site and the Region of Siem Reap Angkor (APSARA). In 2002, he was employed as government staff of the Department of Culture and Fine Arts of Preah Vihear until 2006 he moved to work for the National Authority for Preah Vihear (NAPV) at Preah Vhear World Heritage Site. From 2009 to 2021, PHENG Sam Oeun was promoted as Director of the Department of Monument and Archaeology, NAPV, and in July 2021, he has been appointed as Deputy Director General of the National Authority for Preah Vihear in charge of the Koh Ker Archaeological Site.

Chase F. Robinson is the Dame Jillian Sackler Director of the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery and Freer Gallery of Art at the Smithsonian. He joined the museums in December 2018. Together, the Freer and Sackler comprise the Smithsonian’s national Asian art museums with a total of more than 41,000 works objects ranging from the Neolithic to the present day, including Islamic art, Chinese jades, bronzes and paintings, and the art of the ancient Near East as well as masterworks from Japan, ancient Egypt and South and Southeast Asia. As director, Robinson oversees 115 full-time employees and manage an annual operating budget of $23 million. Previously, Robinson was the president of The Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY) and distinguished professor of history. Robinson, a highly regarded scholar of Middle Eastern history and culture, has served in leadership roles at The Graduate Center for a decade.

Sanjeev Sanyal is the Principal Economic Advisor to the Government of India. An internationally acclaimed economist and best-selling author, he spent two decades in the financial sector and was Global Strategist & Managing Director at Deutsche Bank till 2015. He was named Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum in 2010. He is also a well-known environmentalist and urban theorist. In 2007, he was awarded the Eisenhower Fellowship for his work on urban dynamics. He has been a Visiting Scholar at Oxford University, Adjunct Fellow at the Institute of Policy Studies, Singapore and a Senior Fellow of the World Wide Fund for Nature. He has also served on the Future City Sub-Committee of the Singapore government tasked with building a long-term vision for the city-state.

SUM Sokhamphou is the current Undersecretary of State for the Ministry of Interior in the Kingdom of Cambodia. Mr. Sokhamphou supports leading local education institutions to restructure shareholding and governance structure. Mr. Sokhamphou holds a Master’s Degree in Business Law and Corporate Advice from University Jean Moulin Lyon 3, France. In addition to his current position, Mr. Sokhamphou has served as the Assistant to the Ministry of Environment and Head of the Permanent Secretariat for the Royal Government of Cambodia.

Professor Thompson is a specialist of premodern Khmer arts writ large, with a sustained interest in the productive intersections of sculpture, architecture, literature, theatre and ritual practice… and a growing interest in the impact of Angkor on the development of Buddhist arts and practices across mainland Southeast Asia from the 12th century. Over the course of the 1990s she taught at the Department of Archaeology of the Royal University of Fine Arts, Phnom Penh, and worked in the cabinet of Minister of State Vann Molyvann to develop the Cambodian legal, educational and administrative infrastructure for protecting Khmer cultural heritage at risk, ultimately leading to the foundation of the national authority for the management of Angkor: APSARA.